I have done a whole series of walks since I arrived on Symi more than two weeks ago.  Some have been just a couple of hours and 3 or 4 miles, others longer.  Most of them are through areas I know from previous visits but all look different because the green has not been crisped by the scorching summer sun and the colour of Spring flowers is still very much in evidence.  So I’m still concentrating the blog on showing that spring colour.

Even within Horio the old ruins are brightly decorated with white and yellow daisies and bright splashes of red poppies.  Coming towards May and the end of Spring the sun is hotting up, plants will quickly finish their flowering in order to set seed before the drought so I  suspect that that the colour will not last much longer on the walk down the narrow alleyways to the shops.

Inside a derelict building on the walk down to the shops all that remains are a few stone walls and spring flowers

On top of a wall at head height

Head out of the village and old agricultural terraces are a mass of colour where later they will look brown and scorched, desert-like.  Seen from above some enclosed holdings look like oases in the otherwise barren rock of the mountainsides.  The growing season here is winter, dictated by rainfall and cooler days, not the summer as in temperate climates where winter frosts, snow and heavy rainfall keep perennial plants hunkered down in the soil.

Looking from the path down the Pedi Valley to the ridge topped by windmills

From the path to the monastery of Panagia Myrtidiotisa looking across the rich soils in the col at Ksissos

On the way to Agios Emilianos looking across ‘oases’ of enclosed land

There are so many plants in flower that it is impossible to show them all here.  But below is a sample of the colour on display if you visit the islands at this time of year and get out into the mountains.

I think this may be some kind of clover

More cyclamen in the shade under a tree

A mass of small flowers alongside a stony path

Small and delicate in the middle of the stony path, unknown to me

Again in the path, unknown to me

Walking in sandals makes it important to take care about foot placement, pay more attention to the path.  The result was that the highlight of one walk was spotting tiny orchids growing in the vegetation alongside the trodden ground .

Flower stem about 6 inches high

Zooming in a bit closer

Zooming in on one flower on the stem

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